file archive software | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

An unknown threat actor used a malicious self-extracting archive ( SFX ) file in an attempt to establish persistent backdoor access to a victim's environment, new findings from CrowdStrike show. SFX files are capable of extracting the data contained within them without the need for dedicated software to display the file contents. It achieves this by including a decompressor stub, a piece of code that's executed to unpack the archive. "However, SFX archive files can also contain hidden malicious functionality that may not be immediately visible to the file's recipient, and could be missed by technology-based detections alone," CrowdStrike researcher Jai Minton  said . In the case investigated by the cybersecurity firm, compromised credentials to a system were used to run a legitimate Windows accessibility application called Utility Manager (utilman.exe) and subsequently launch a password-protected SFX file. This, in turn, is made possible by  configuring a de...

It's not just the critical Drupal vulnerability that is being exploited by in the wild  cybercriminals to attack vulnerable websites that have not yet applied patches already available by its developers, but hackers are also exploiting a critical WinRAR vulnerability that was also revealed last week. A few days ago, The Hacker News reported about a 19-year-old remote code execution vulnerability disclosed by Check Point in the UNACEV2.dll library of WinRAR that could allow a maliciously-crafted ACE archive file to execute arbitrary code on a targeted system. WinRAR is a popular Windows file compression application with 500 million users worldwide, but a critical "Absolute Path Traversal" bug (CVE-2018-20250) in its old third-party library, called UNACEV2.DLL, could allow attackers to extract a compressed executable file from the ACE archive to one of the Windows Startup folders, where the file would automatically run on the next reboot. To successfully exploit the...

Vulnerability Management (VM) has long been a cornerstone of organizational cybersecurity. Nearly as old as the discipline of cybersecurity itself, it aims to help organizations identify and address potential security issues before they become serious problems. Yet, in recent years, the limitations of this approach have become increasingly evident.  At its core, Vulnerability Management processes remain essential for identifying and addressing weaknesses. But as time marches on and attack avenues evolve, this approach is beginning to show its age. In a recent report, How to Grow Vulnerability Management into Exposure Management (Gartner, How to Grow Vulnerability Management Into Exposure Management, 8 November 2024, Mitchell Schneider Et Al.), we believe Gartner® addresses this point precisely and demonstrates how organizations can – and must – shift from a vulnerability-centric strategy to a broader Exposure Management (EM) framework. We feel it's more than a worthwhile read an...